Responsibility With (Tech) Power

Context: With 700 million internet users in India, defining the power of the internet economy raises the imperative for trust and ethics and the importance of regulations.

Responsibilities with increasing tech power: With great power comes great responsibility.

• Improving trust, ethics and transparency: Trust is the key currency of the hyper-digital era, and this will lead to higher business success.
• Effective regulation:  for responsible build and use of tech, it requires important stakeholders coming together where the learning will be steep and constantly evolving to keep pace with technology shifts.

Intermediary and Digital Media Ethics Code, 2021: Fulfils the above-mentioned responsibilities by-

• Addressing user concerns: through grievance redressal, fake news and online safety.
• Enhancing accountability: It increases the onus of accountability on social media platforms on the transparency of privacy policies and user agreements.
• Attaching responsibility proportionately: by distinguishing social media intermediaries and ‘significant’ social media intermediaries.
  • This will help the start-ups, while the principles of responsible tech and privacy will be embedded from the beginning.

Way forward

• Address the concerns related to freedom of speech and expression: Adopt a continued consultative approach to ensure implementation is done in the right spirit.
• Achieve a balance between innovation and safety: ensuring the sustainable growth of the industry and checking the misuse of technology
• Embrace privacy transparency and accountability: with no bias in data so as to enable inclusion and access.
• NITI Aayog paper, ‘National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence’ #AIForAll’- identifies existing legal provisions and international and best practices.

Conclusion: Technology, if used right, can be a great accelerator for good and be an equaliser.